Doa Ii Page 3

  “What was the sacrifice?”

  “Chickens. Cats. Mostly it was dogs.”

  Dogs like Katie.

  It was amazing and highly unusual. Patricia had created this personality in total identification with the dead or soon-to-be dead.

  The dead taken inside her, made one with her.

  A remarkable exercise in compassion.

  “And then there was that one time,” she said. “You know. Her initiation.”

  The voice was small and not nearly so matter-of-fact as before. Unsure. Almost frightened.

  He knew that tone.

  Because it was at this point that Leslie’s information had almost always stopped in the past, here or only slightly further. Something about the initiation had been highly traumatic. Hooker knew from sessions past that Patricia had been sixteen years old at the time, the age at which most of the personalities erupted out of her all at once, guardians at the gate of her sanity. He knew that the initiation had occurred in her parents’ basement. And that was about all he knew.

  He looked at the clock. Three o’clock exactly.

  To hell with the time. He needed to try.

  “Leslie, in the past you haven’t wanted to tell me about this, I know. And I understand that it’s difficult for you. But this time’s going to be different. I’ll tell you how and why it’s different. You see the tape recorder on the desk there beside you?”

  She looked and nodded.

  “What’s different is that this time I’m taping this. And next session I’ll play the tape back for Patricia. When I do, Patricia will know and understand what they did to her. She’ll understand why she’s this way, why all of you are this way. And can you guess what happens then?”

  She shook her head.

  “The pain stops. A little more time, a little more therapy, and it stops.”

  He looked at her, gave it a moment. He thought, trust me.

  “Tell me about it, Leslie,” he said.

  For a moment he thought it wouldn’t happen. Then she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes and when she opened them again she was remembering.

  “There was a boy,” she said. “I don’t know where he came from. Not one of the usual boys, I mean. Not one of theirs. Spanish, I think, Cuban or Mexican, about Patricia’s age. Patricia had a lot of some kind of drug and so had the boy and they both were naked and they put her down on the table, the alter, with the boy standing over her, everybody chanting while he put his penis in and started doing it. He was doing it a long while and it was hurting. And then Mr. Gannet reached over with this knife he had, this sacrificial knife which was very, very sharp, and he cut the boy…you know the place, right between the…the balls and the asshole? That skin there?”

  Hooker nodded.

  “And there was blood running out of him, all this blood, running down his legs and dripping off the alter but I guess because of the drugs or because it was doing it, I don’t know, he didn’t know it at first, he just kept doing it to her but Patricia knew, she could feel it pooling up under her real warm and wet and finally the boy got it too, he started screaming and went to pull out of her but by then Mr. Gannet was around the side of him and cut him across his throat with the knife and Patricia was screaming and the boy was coughing blood, it was all over the place, all over her, she tasted it, and all the others were around them catching the blood with bowls, drinking the blood from his neck and from between his legs and she could smell his shit and they were catching that in bowls too and smearing it across their faces, across their mouths, and instead of coming inside her he just released it, you know? He pissed inside her.”

  “Well, then the boy fell on top of her, he was dead, and Mr. Gannet handed Patricia the knife and told her to stab him in the name of Lord Satan and she was so scared and so mad at the boy—it was weird—so really completely furious at him, that she did. Stabbed him over and over and over.”

  She stopped, puzzled.

  “I wonder why she was so angry at him? And not at them.”

  He let her consider it a moment. There wasn’t time to get into it now though he knew perfectly well where the anger of one victim toward another usually came from. Another session.

  “What happened then?”

  She shrugged. “They ate the boy’s heart. They smeared her with his blood. Then they did it to her one at a time. Then they let her go upstairs to shower and then they let her sleep.”

  Ten minutes after three. They’d got through it. It was over.

  He felt shaken. Elated too. He couldn’t believe what he had here.

  “I’m going to count to five, Leslie,” he said. “When I get to five I’ll be speaking to Patricia again and she’ll be awake, rested, relaxed and comfortable and she’ll remember none of this. You did very well. Thank you.”

  “Doctor?”

  “Yes?”

  “Patricia’s scared again.”

  “She needn’t be.”

  “She knows I told. That I told you everything.”

  “Patricia’s going to be fine, believe me. I’m going to count to five now, all right? Close your eyes.”

  He counted.

  Patricia opened her eyes and smiled.

  “Well, how’d we do?” she said.

  “You did beautifully.” He returned her smile. “I want to go over this with you as soon as possible. But I’ve got another patient outside right now.”

  He consulted his book.

  “How is three o’clock Wednesday—day after tomorrow?”

  “Fine.”

  “We’ve made a breakthrough here, Patricia. You should know that.”

  “Really? Then can’t you…?”

  “No. I’m afraid not. Not right now. This is going to take some time. I’m scheduling you for two hours again Wednesday, all right?”

  “All right.”

  He handed her up the jacket on the floor in front of him. She didn’t even ask how it got there. She was practically an old pro at this by now. She gathered up her coat and purse and stood to leave. Hesitated and then turned back to him.

  “Should I be worried?” she said.

  “Worried about what?”

  “I don’t know. Just…worried.”

  “No. Not at all. We’re already through the worst of it. There are some very difficult issues to face, I won’t deny that for a moment, but now at least we know what we’re dealing with. We know for sure. It’s going to take some time. But you’re going to have a life, Patricia. A full, integrated life. Without hiding. Without fear.”

  She smiled. “I’ll see you Wednesday, then, doctor. And I guess...well, I guess we’ll just see.”

  She stepped through the door to the waiting room and closed it gently behind her. He walked to the table beside her empty chair and turned off the recorder. Pushed the rewind button and heard the sibilant hiss of tape which was her voice and his so that he knew it hadn’t failed him and then heard it click back into the start position. He unplugged the recorder, walked to his desk, opened the top drawer and slipped it away.

  In the waiting room outside he heard a chair thump against the wall. His three o’clock was probably impatient as hell right now, would probably need some soothing of feathers. That was all right. At the moment he felt up to anything. He walked across the room and opened the door.

  The man crouched over her, a big man all in black—jacket, shoes, trousers—crouched over her so that Hooker could see her lifeless eyes and open mouth and the back of his head moving side to side just below her chin. There was blood all over the walls and the landscape paintings hung there to set his patients at ease, blood still pulsing up from out of her neck over and around both sides of the man’s head, drenching his long black greasy hair and he looked up at Hooker and grinned, his face a thin bright mask of red, teeth dripping paler blood, thinned with saliva. Hooker saw the knife in his left hand and the bloodstained silver pentagram around his neck.

  “Session’s over,” hissed the man. “Patient’s cured
.”

  He stepped back through the doorway to his office as though somebody had shoved him. Tried to slam the door. The bloody left hand shot out against it with a crack and thrust him back into the room.

  The man stood on the threshold.

  For a moment as he approached him, Hooker thought of all the people, all the structure, all the wealth of invention and will to survive that had just died out there in the waiting room and the only solace was that the tape would outlive them, the man would not know about the tape, his work would go on in a way, and in a way so would she go on, despite and not because of his ambitions for them both though it was not enough, not nearly enough for either of them or for her children. He thought publish or perish or both because of course that was what had done it to them and then heard the whimper of a dog which was his whimper as the knife came down and down.

  SCREAM AND I’LL COME TO YOU

  Raymond Little

  “Now, it’s your turn.” Beth Mackenzie popped the barrel from the revolver and let the bullets drop into her palm before passing the gun to her eight-year-old daughter.

  “When am I going to learn how to shoot it?”

  Beth glanced down from the porch at the long shadows cutting stripes across the dirt driveway. “Tomorrow. Don’t forget the safety catch. Always check.”

  “I know.” Megan ran a finger over the button, the way her mother had shown her a hundred times. “Safety on.” She loaded the bullets one by one, the big revolver dipping under its own weight in her small hands.

  “That’s good. Now, where do we always keep it, until the day we might need it?”

  “In the pot under the sink.”

  “That’s right.” Beth forced a smile for her daughter and wondered once again how it could have come to this. “Come on, honey,” she said, “let’s go and make something to eat.”

  Supper was simple—eggs on toast using the bread she’d baked when they’d come to the farm—and they dined by candlelight.

  “Are we going to live here forever?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “But how will Daddy find us?”

  Beth looked away. She knew the odds of Phil still being alive somewhere out there were more than remote. “He’ll find a way if he can, sweetheart. Until then we’ll just have to look out for each other.”

  ~

  Three came that night, in a dirty blue mini-bus. The screaming had woken Beth long before the hum of the approaching engine, enough warning for her to be ready. “Stay here,” she told Megan as she led her to the back bedroom. “Lock the door behind me and don’t open it for anyone else, no matter what they say.”

  The bus slowed and stopped ten feet short of where she stood, her pistol held out in both hands. The headlights blinked and faded as the motor switched off and the driver, lit silver by the full moon, stepped out.

  “I suggest you get back in your van, sir, and drive back the way you came.” She had to shout to be heard over the screaming coming from the back of the mini-bus, which helped to keep the tremble from her voice.

  “Please,” the man called. “I’ve been driving for hours, I need help.” He stepped forward.

  “Stay right where you are!” Beth fingered the safety.

  “Please.” The man’s voice cracked. Big shoulders jerked up and down while he held his face in his hands, trying to cover the tears and snot that fell freely.

  “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do for you. You may be infected. You have to go.”

  The man took a few moments to compose himself before wiping his sleeve across his face. “Let me have your gun, then. I’ll take them away and...” He broke down crying.

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “But they’re suffering. You can’t just turn us away!”

  “I have to.”

  “Do it for me, then. Shoot them and I’ll go. I promise.”

  “Who are they?”

  “My wife. And my son.”

  Beth shook her head. “Don’t ask me to do that.” At the same time she thought of the pact she’d made with her daughter, the training she’d given the child in how exactly to shoot her own mother should the worst happen—and realized the hypocrisy of her answer to this poor man’s request. Was she really incapable of doing to strangers what she intended to do to Megan if she became infected?

  “Get back in the van and turn the engine on. Keep facing front and don’t watch. When it’s done, drive away. Don’t ever come back, and don’t tell anyone else about this place.”

  She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and placed it over her nose and mouth as the man took his place behind the wheel and switched on the ignition. The electric window slid down as she approached and, no longer muffled, the screaming became unbearable. Beth looked in the back seat, illuminated by the dull, yellow internal light, and saw the man’s wife slumped against the door, her face contorted with agony, fear and exhaustion. She turned her gaze on Beth, her eyes bulging, and screamed at the top of her lungs. Vomit and dried spittle caked the woman’s chin and Beth gagged into her handkerchief at the rancid odor of excrement, urine, and something worse, like rotting meat.

  “Anne started screaming yesterday morning,” the man said without turning. “Jack’s had it for four days.”

  She looked at the boy in the far seat. His expression matched his mother’s but no sound came from his wide open mouth; his vocal chords had been destroyed by his own exertions. He was near the end, his lips cracked and blistered from dehydration, his gasps shallow between the silent screams. He was emaciated, the skin stretched so thin across his cheekbones it had begun to split. Beth saw his eyes and looked away, ashamed at her own revulsion. His eyeballs, deep red from blown blood vessels, protruded from their sunken sockets so that they were barely held in place. Crimson tear-drops seeped from the corners in mourning for his ruinous state.

  “Do it,” the man said. “Please, just do it.”

  Beth glanced at the farmhouse and prayed that Megan hadn’t been tempted to leave the room at the back to see what was going on. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” she said to the woman as she raised the gun.

  A change of expression, almost imperceptible, crossed the doomed woman’s eyes. Later, as Beth replayed the scene over and over, she would tell herself it was gratitude.

  “Make it quick,” the man said over his shoulder.

  Beth obeyed, and when it was done the man thanked her for killing his family.

  ~

  No sleep would come that night.

  “What did they want?” Megan asked as Beth settled her into the bed they shared.

  “They wanted to stay here.”

  Megan clutched the sheets under her chin. “Did you shoot them?”

  “They’re gone now, honey. You don’t have to worry about them.”

  “I heard two gunshots.” Her voice trembled. “I was scared. I thought they might have had a gun. But the screaming stopped and I knew you were okay.”

  Beth felt her eyes begin to water as she fought away the vision of gore and brains spattered across the rear interior of the vehicle. She’d taken their lives and surrendered her humanity; it seemed an unfair deal on both sides.

  “I’m glad you shot them, Mummy.” She lifted one arm from beneath her bedding and clutched her mother’s hand. “They were in pain. I wouldn’t want to suffer like that. I’ve been thinking, though. Maybe we can’t catch the screams. A man on the telly said that some people were maroon.”

  “I think immune is what he said.” Beth wiped a cuff across her damp cheeks and smiled.

  “I miss the telly. Do you think it will come back?”

  “One day, maybe. If there are people out there who know how to get the electricity back on.” Even as she said it, though, Beth doubted her own words. Getting any kind of power grid back in use would be a massive undertaking. From what she’d seen before they’d come to the farm she didn’t believe there would be anywhere near enough survivors to organize such a tas
k. “There are plenty of books, though.”

  “Will you read to me for a while?”

  “Of course I will. I’ll make us a hot drink.”

  ~

  Beth hugged her dressing gown around her shoulders as she waited down in the kitchen for the water to boil on the old wood stove. So much had changed in such a short time, but they’d coped. It was just three months since the first victim of the screams had been reported in the media. Not a long time for society to collapse.

  That first case, a young man in France, had perplexed the doctors. Their initial diagnosis of a psychological condition had been crushed within days as similar cases broke out across Europe, then the world. All victims had the same single symptom, to suddenly start screaming for no apparent reason. The treatment of intravenous food and liquids—it was impossible to eat or drink—could not keep up with the rising number of cases. An untreated screamer could expect to survive no more than five or six days of the unbearable agony their condition brought. Their vocal chords would perish within two days—becoming useless, severed folds of bloody flesh—though the person would still put all their effort into the silent scream that would now only escape their gaping mouths in a low, wet hiss. Exhaustion, dehydration and organ failure followed.

  The first screamer Beth had seen, three days into the outbreak, was a teenage girl working at the local supermarket checkout. One moment she was scanning a tin of soup and making polite conversation, the next screaming as loud as she possibly could, her bulging eyeballs rolling from side to side in fear and confusion, searching the faces of her line of shoppers for some kind of help. The store emptied within seconds, the customers running into the street for fear of contamination. By the end of that week the shops had begun to shut and board up as the emergency ration system began, the army and police patrolling the high streets for looters. Wearing a uniform held no immunity though, and as the forces’ numbers were depleted, the streets began to resemble a battlefield. The real riots began in earnest by the third week, kick-started by the shocking leaked internet footage of the President strapped down and screaming in a hospital bed.